


this is the way the world ended

by punkcowboy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Infinity War spoilers, Kinda, May Parker Needs a Hug, May Parker-centric, SERIOUSLY SPOILER WARNING, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 15:38:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18759364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkcowboy/pseuds/punkcowboy
Summary: May’s world ends, but she has to keep goingThat’s what Parker’s do, after all





	this is the way the world ended

**Author's Note:**

> BIG OL’ SPOILERS FOR ENDGAME Y’ALL DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED IT
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> WARNINGS: swearing, grief, mourning and off-screen character death (nothing explicit)
> 
> First line contains a spoiler for Infinity War so just in case you’ve been living under a rock, I’m going to make this beginning note massive so that if you haven’t seen it you have tIME to get aWAY
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> No? Then enjoy :)))

Peter was gone, and May remained.

May remained, and Peter was _gone_.

She couldn’t wrap her head around it, no matter what way she phrased it. May had survived the snap, and Peter hadn’t. It should never have been that way around. She could live to a grand old age, or maybe she would die at thirty, but she would be looking out for Peter until her dying breath. And no matter what, he would live on.

But.

He’d disappeared, and May had spent five years alone, thinking he along with half the universe was dead. She had always been proud of the fact that she had so much compassion; but with so many people grieving, in pain, that ability to empathise took a toll on her- especially when she didn’t have a shoulder to cry on when it all got too much.

No Ben, no Peter. Just May.

She got by. She helped to set up support groups all over New York, finding people to run them and encouraging others to attend. She was good at it, too. As much as she failed to move on, she was good at helping others to do what she herself couldn’t.

She focused particularly on setting up groups for young people- so many who had lost their parents, their siblings, who had no one to turn to. May listened to them, gave them somewhere to go.

And if she went home sobbing anytime she came across a kid with green eyes and curly brown hair, or one who joked and jumped around the place, making everyone smile despite having endured so much- well, she was the only one who knew. If a tree falls and all that.

She kept up her nursing job, too. They were always short staffed- for obvious reasons- and so she took on a lot more double shifts, sometimes triple. She joked that it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to be when anyone questioned her decision to stay on, but no-one ever laughed. Just looked at her with sad eyes, in a way that made May’s skin itch and tears threaten to spill. But she would hold her head high and get on with her job, because she had been telling the truth, really- she had nowhere else to be. No one to get back to.

By the time Tony visited, May already knew, but seeing him at the door with- with no Peter by his side only confirmed it. And if she broke down at the sight, if she sank to the floor as Tony murmured apologies with glassy eyes and shaking hands, neither of them would ever say a word.

Tony would visit often after that, and sometimes Pepper would, too,and May was even invited to the wedding- a much more understated affair than had originally been planned, but that was only to be expected.

But when they adopted Morgan, when they moved to that cabin, May stopped answering when she saw their number. It was cruel, maybe, but she felt that it was the right thing to do.

She wasn’t angry at them, not in the slightest- she was beyond happy that they had gotten the quiet family life that they’d both dreamed of, with the child that they’d always wanted to have. God, she was _ecstatic_ for them, to have been able to find something good after the world fell to pieces. Their love, their little family that they had built, was a small sliver of a silver lining on the biggest fucking cloud in the sky.

The problem with keeping in touch was that, no matter what, she would always be a constant reminder of what they had lost. She reminded Tony of Peter, and although she knew he would never forget either, the least she could do was avoid pushing the thorn in any deeper than it already was. He had been there when he disappeared, and although to May she wished that she had been the one, to hold Peter so that she could comfort him, make sure he knew she was there for him, Tony was haunted by the memory that he had. He’d been the one to hold him as he took his last breath, not May. Not May. May wasn’t there for Peter when he needed her most. It wasn’t _fair_.

But that was Parker luck.

She was still lost, lost without _her_ child, and everyone who was left, who had known her and Peter- they knew it. No matter how hard she tried to hide it, put on a brave face and move on- she never could.

Mary and Richard. Gone. Ben. Gone. And now Peter-

 _Gone_.

And May lived those five years feeling as if the entire world was resting on her shoulders. She should have been there for Peter, she should have stopped him from going away in the first place, should have held him tight and never let go and stopped him from floating away. Held him together, said “fuck you” to the universe and stopped it from happening to him, to her Peter.

Five years.

But then-

Then they came back, all at once.

The streets filled with hundreds, thousands of people who everyone had been grieving for. Right in the places they had disappeared from. Everyone who had been left behind cried and cried and cried some more, while those who’d re-appeared stood, just- confused. Like they’d simply been frozen in time, as if nothing had happened but god, they’d missed so much. They’d _been_ missed, so fucking much.

It would be a while before any of them understood, and the damage done to the original survivors would never be unmade, but at least they were _back_.

May just had to hope that Peter was too.

As the sky darkened and monsters fell from above, she hoped. As the world shook, and everyone screamed and hugged and sheltered together, May stood alone, waiting. There was only one person she wanted to hold right now.

She waited as the ships blotting out the sun headed in the same direction, and somehow she knew. Maybe it was because of his habit of always getting in the middle of things far bigger than himself, maybe it was because it was the one place he hoped he wouldn’t be. But she knew.

Peter was there.

But, fuck, she knew he was back, and god knows she wasn’t letting him die again before she’d even seen his face.

It had been far too long since she’d seen his face.

So she hoped and she prayed to every deity there was. She’d have made a deal with the devil himself if she knew how.

And then the ships disappeared, in the way that so many people had all those years ago, and May knew her prayers had been answered. At what cost? She had no idea, but at that moment she didn’t care because-

Because Peter was safe. She could feel it.

And that was all that mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sorry, I get very In My Feelings when it comes to May Parker


End file.
